Welcome to this week’s blog. Here’s a roundup of your comments and photos from last week – from poetry to combat the January blues, to books about how to stop caring what others think... Dip in.
salfordexile66 is “knackered” after sitting up for half a night, reading HHhH by Laurent Binet – about the assassination of Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich in Prague during World War II – in one sitting:
Truly moving tale about the circumstances surrounding the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. People who overuse the term ‘hero’ should read this book and take note.
I’ve also started Ghosts of Spain by Giles Tremlett about modern Spain and how the legacy of Franco and the Civil War has been almost airbrushed from history. Good so far so I’ll give it a recommend too.
Nicole Costello thinks we should all take lessons from this “life-changing” book and “use it as a tool to get closer to your 2016 goals”:
WebberExpat “managed to rip through” Tea Obreht’s novel The Tiger’s Wife, set in the Balkans:
Overall, it was a lovely book, switching easily back and forth between modern times as the narrator makes a humanitarian trip to enemy territory and the past told through her grandfather’s recollections. I had bought it when it was a massive hit back in 2010, but the hype put me off of it for a bit, I try to avoid bandwagon hopping. It was very much Marquezesque in the oddly fantastic stories of the grandfather, dealing with tigers and the undying, but it was never quite comparable to master of magical realism (but then again, who is?). Mostly it was an enjoyable read with the underlying darkness of the post-Balkan war recovery. I thought there were a few plot lines, stories that felt extraneous, but it didn’t much hinder the reading.
Swelter finished Is That a Fish in Your Ear? by David Bellos – a book about translation:
It covers a pretty wide range of translation issues (law, diplomacy, film subtitles, poems, books) and consequently doesn’t get into any area in much depth. Most surprising to me was that Bellos does not seem to think that, beyond publishers’ desire for copyright protections, there is much need for re-translations of classic works; he makes an exception of the cases where there is some new text in the original language, such as an unexpurgated edition of a previously censored work. Perhaps I’ve been somewhat brainwashed by the publishing industry, but I kind of thought that it was “a truth universally acknowledged” that classic works needed to be re-translated (at least) every generation or so. I suppose Bellos’s opinion is in keeping with what I sensed was his general attitude that most translations that get published are acceptable versions of the work, conveying the same information with the same force as the original.
LeeBurrows1 is “dipping in and out of poetry to combat the weather and post Christmas blues. My favourite volume at the moment is the brilliantly eclectic Charles Simic”:
Interesting links about books and reading
- The Ideal Marriage, According to Novels: on how male and female authors have conceived and depicted love differently through literature’s history. In The New Yorker.
- Letter to Borges: Susan Sontag on Books, Self-Transcendence, and Reading in the Age of Screens: a heartwarming, inspiring letter from a great to a great – via Brain Pickings.
- How Frida Kahlo’s Love Letter Shaped Romance for Punk Poet Patti Smith: “One dreams that we could meet these people that we so admire, to see them in their lifetimes.” Speaking of goddesses, Patti Smith here talks to the Smithsonian Magazine about how Kahlo’s letters to Diego Rivera were a model for her own love life.
- A Reader’s Oddyssey: Mark Sarvas on The Great Gatsby: a writer has started every year – since 1993 – by reading the Fitzgerald classic in a single sitting. 2016 is no different. In Sacred Trespasses.
- In Search of the Novel’s First Sentence: A Secret History: on how great first sentences in novels have become more and more important over time. In Electric Literature.
- Bill Bryson: By the Book, in which he talks book piles on his nightstand, Shakespeare, and the fact that is reading Anna Karenina at the glacial pace of 20 pages a year. In the New York Times Book Review, as recommended by conedison.
If you would like to share a photo of the book you are reading, or film your own book review, please do. Click the blue button on this page to share your video or image. I’ll include some of your posts in next week’s blog.
If you’re on Instagram and a book lover, chances are you’re already sharing beautiful pictures of books you are reading, “shelfies” or all kinds of still lifes with books as protagonists. Now, you can share your reads with us on the mobile photography platform – simply tag your pictures there with #GuardianBooks, and we’ll include a selection here.
And, as always, if you have any suggestions for topics you’d like to see us covering beyond TLS, do let us know.
